Long ER wait times have nothing to do with McGuinty's Liberals!

Grant Lafleche wrote in "ER back-ups causing longer wait times" (St.Catharines Standard, Jan.28, 2011):

"It was a long 8 1/2 hours for Jim Brady. He understood why his daughter was not at the top of the triage list at the St. Catharines General emergency room.
But the wait seemed like forever, and was one he had hoped to avoid if possible.
"If we know the ER is really busy at, say, 11 or 12 at night, we'll not bring her in until around 2 in the morning to try and avoid the wait," Brady said.
There was no avoiding the wait.
Brady called ahead, but the hospital would not tell him how long the wait time was. His daughter was suffering from serious nausea. She was treated during a previous hospital visit, but the doctor said to come back if the problem returned.
It did, so Brady brought his daughter in last week.
"That's when we saw the sign," he said. "It said the wait was 8 1/2 hours. I understand they are busy, and the life-threatening cases have to go first. But 8 1/2 hours seems too long under any condition."
Unfortunately, the wait times at Niagara ERs have been longer than usual for non-urgent cases, said Anne Atkinson, vice-president of patient services for the Niagara Health System.
Atkinson said the volume of patients has not increased. But what has changed is the number of patients needing cardiac care and those who need to be admitted. That's led to a shortage of beds to move patients into the hospital, meaning many of those patients end up staying in the ER.
"We've cancelled all elective surgeries for the week," she said, although emergency surgeries and cancer-related surgeries will go ahead as scheduled.
While she sympathizes with people like Brady, she said it is not possible for the NHS to post real-time wait times on the Internet or tell people when they call.
"We need staff to be taking care of patients," she said.
Besides, the wait times at the ER are often event-specific. The wait time might be relatively short, but can change quickly because of a car accident, for example.
Atkinson said the ER also does not want to discourage patients from coming in if they need emergency care because of a potentially long wait. If someone needs emergency care, she said that person needs to go to the ER.
Nevertheless, she said the NHS continues to encourage people with non-life-threatening conditions -- like broken bones, fever, cough or sprains -- to use the urgent care centres, like the one on Ontario St. in St. Catharines.
Atkinson said typically, the wait time at the urgent care is about 2.3 hours. Right now, wait times at the St. Catharines ER are longer than the provincial benchmark of four hours, she said, a problem that's exacerbated by the severity of the conditions of current patients at the hospital."
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Well, we know how Jim Brady feels, but how does Jim Bradley feel about this???

It's funny, eh, how there isn't ANY mention at all in Ole Slant Lafleche's article about how Jim Bradley - who just happens to be the local Liberal MPP whose government runs the hospital monopoly in St.Catharines - feels about what his Liberal policies have done to health care in Ontario!!

Was Liberal MPP Jim Bradley even asked by this slanted Standard reporter/stenographer/propagandist for a comment or explanation?!

Hahahaha... better just to leave Ole Jimmy outta this!!!

{The St.Catharines Standard Bradley Bootlicker should have a warning label on their LiberalFriendly TM biased stories, assuring readers that the story has been sanitized for the reader's political protection, and carefully crafted so that no Liberals were harmed by the Standard's slanted spin!}

Predictably, Jim Bradley conveniently isn't mentioned by the St.Catharines Standard - why should he be?!!! hahahahaaaaa...

It's not like Jim Bradley or his Liberals have anything to do with controlling the monopolist health care system which Brady's daughter had to - was forced to - wait in... right?!?!  In about a half an hour, Brady could have gone to Buffalo, like so many other Ontarians have had to do. Don't tell Michael Moore though.

Gawrsh, just think of how sanctimonious and giddy Ole Jimmy Bradley and the slanted local press would be if this had happened during Mike Harris' watch: both Jim Bradley and Slant Lafleche would be sleeping in front of the evil-Conservative-with-the-hidden-agenda's home, protesting health-care-cuts and trying to get an interview!! No?!

But now... so what? The Standard's slanted spin is to not mention Ole Liberal Jimmy, and not to get Ole Jimmy involved, when the optics ain't good fer Ole Jimmy!!!

Seeing that it's Jimmy's Liberals who are now in charge...
[and have been for the last seven years, in case Kim It's-All-Harris'-Fault Craitor hasn't noticed]
...then this can be easily glossed-over and excused as just a wee wittle hiccup - as Smitherman used to say, these incidents aren't problems with monopoly health-care, these are just mere 'anomalies', hearsay, anecdotes, old wive's tales..! - in other words, it's no biggie! This isn't important enough for Bradley to be involved!

So what that some lowly Ontario patient waited for 8 hours for emergency care! Big Whoop... ya think Ole Liberal Jimmy gives a shit about patients?! Jim Bradley is busy Saving The PLANET!!!

Jimmy's more interested in lickin' Tommy Douglas' dead socialist ass; and the monopoly-cheering-press is more interested in keeping Ole Jimmy as far away from these frequently disturbing incidents as possible.

We all know the song, all together now: Jim Bradley has nothing to do with this!!

McGuinty's health minister Deb Matthews several days ago was dancing with glee in Brantford, telling their local hospital how great they were - even mentioning their low DEATH-RATES. Gary Chalk "reported"...

[...more like gushed.... by the way, Standard reporters: read Chalk's story as a lesson and marvel at its pure Liberal ass-kissing pageantry. This is how monopolist propaganda should be done!! Oh-rah-rah-raahhhh-Liberals-Yippee!!]

...in the Brantford Expositor earlier this week in "Minister celebrates - and washes hands" about Matthews saying:  "You are the No. 1 hospital in Canada for the lowest death rate of patients. This doesn't just happen. All your indicators, all the patient safety indicators, infection rates, are very low here," she said to applause. "Congratulations!"

Yet this same Liberal Health Minister has never bothered to explain the high patient-death-rate in Niagara!! Neither did her predecessor Liberal Health Ministers David Caplan, nor did George Smitherman!

So, Deb: did the high patient death rate "just happen" in Niagara - or was that one planned?! Did the high death rate at the NHS have anything to do with your Liberal health care cuts?

How did all that "happen" Deb?

Feel free to contact the St.Catharines Standard with your "explanation". (Cuz the Standard won't bother asking a Liberal, they're just happy ass-kissing a Liberal, any Liberal...)

Yeah: Deb Matthews "washed her hands" all right: she washed her hands of explaining to Niagarans what transpired under her Liberal government's watch in the LHIN-controlled NHS.

No-one at the St.Catharines Standard has bothered to ask their buddy, Best Boy Jimmy, about that, so why the hell would the Standard bother to involve Ole Jimmy in some two-bit story about a long wait time?!! Feh - Jimmy's got priorities such as building useless arts centres and attending election fundraisers.

Why would the local yokels need an explanation from Jim Bradley about the bed shortages, surgery cancellations and outrageous wait times, in his own riding, in his own Liberal health monopoly? What does MPP Jim Bradley have to do with any of that?!

Like Deb Matthews, Jim Bradley has also "washed his hands" of any responsibility for what is happening in Niagara's Health System.

And the local ass-kissing press conveniently keeps handing Good Ole Jimmy more soap.

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Here is a good editorial  "Crisis in the ER" (National Post. Jan.28, 2011) (Same day as LeFleche's half-story appeared)

"This just in: Going to the emergency room is hazardous to your health. Not only do you have to worry about whatever afflictions may have brought you there in the first place, but also those you could pick up while you wait -- and wait, and wait.
That is the conclusion of a landmark paper authored by researchers at Dalhousie University, recently published in the international health-care journal BMJ Quality and Safety. According to the study, prolonged waits in the ER put patients at greater risk of suffering "adverse events," ranging from surgical complications, medication errors and c. difficile infections.
Among 982 otherwise healthy elderly patients tracked by the study, the risk of these incidents climbed by 3% for every hour spent in the ER. With average wait times of 20 hours in some provinces, this represents a substantial increase in mortality, not to mention an increase in system-wide pain, suffering and economic costs to the health-care system.
Why does this happen? Researchers theorize that a combination of factors, including immobilization for long periods of time, exposure to infectious disease, a disorienting environment and sometimes incompatible treatments from multiple health-care workers (some of them on different shifts), may increase susceptibility to hospital-induced problems. In the words of author Stacy Ackroyd-Stolarz, "It might push [patients] over the tipping point."
And sometimes that point isn't just illness, but death. Over the last year, there have been several shocking cases of patients dying in Canadian emergency rooms while waiting for treatment.
In December 2010, 41-year-old Marlene Stephens died after waiting an hour and a half at the William Osler Health Centre emergency room in Toronto. According to family members, she was experiencing respiratory problems, and crying out that she couldn't breathe, but was ignored.
In October 2010, at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital in Montreal, a 64-year-old diabetic man, Andre Desjardins, died after a seven-hour wait in a wheelchair, during which he was denied a stretcher, because none were available. In February 2010, an elderly Alzheimer's patient died after a two-hour wait in the same ER.
And then there is the case of Montreal resident Mieczyslaw Figiel. In February 2010, he died in a corridor at Maisonneuve-Rosemont, after his family banged on the window of the ER triage station in a desperate attempt to get help. Nearly one year later, a coroner's report confirmed that the ER was so overcrowded that patients were not being seen until the following afternoon. In the past year, the number of 48-hour waits in Quebec's ERs increased by 15%.
Studies already have concluded that prolonged wait times for surgery can bring on secondary health problems, such as depression or dependency on pain medication. Waiting can also exacerbate the patient's underlying condition, requiring more serious intervention than if the problem had been promptly corrected. Governments promise to remedy the situation--usually by throwing more tax dollars at the problem, yet the queues only get longer. Despite constant increases in health spending, Canadians are waiting 96% longer for surgery in 2010 than they did in 1993, according to the most recent edition of an annual report on treatment wait times, Waiting Your Turn, published by the Fraser Institute think-tank.
More money is not going to cure this condition. According to Nadeem Esmail, the Fraser Institute's former director of health policy, Canadians currently underwrite the developed world's second-most-expensive universal public health system. In an article published in 2009, he notes, "Only Iceland spent more on a universal-access health insurance system than Canada as a share of GDP, while Switzerland spent as much as Canada.... Twenty-five developed nations [that] maintain universal health insurance programs spent less than we did; as much as 38% less as a percentage of GDP in the case of Japan."
Instead of propping up a state-run, monopoly-payer system, in which care is rationed from the ER to the OR, governments should allow the private sector to lift the burden from our overcrowded public hospitals. A mixed-delivery system, such as exists in Europe, where wait times are nowhere near Canadian levels, would create competition and open up more facilities and opportunities for treatment.
To those politicians who cling to an ideology of enforced "equality," we say this: How long do patients have to wait before they get choice in health care? How many have to suffer? How many more have to die?"

Maybe, one day, someone from the St.Catharines Standard will actually pull their head out of Jim 'The Monopolist Enforcer' Bradley's butt, and ask Jimmy those same questions.
I wonder what the wait-time will be before that ever happens.
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